New political fury hit US President Barack Obama’s White House on Monday over anti-terror policies of former US president George W. Bush’s administration, after Attorney General Eric Holder named a prosecutor to probe alleged CIA prisoner abuse.
Officials meanwhile announced that Obama had set up a new team of elite interrogators to grill suspects under White House supervision, absolving the CIA of a duty that few senior officers wanted in the first place.
The moves were the latest attempt by the administration to purge the politically corrosive legacy of anti-terror measures pursued during the Bush era that are now outlawed.
The task of dealing with that fallout, and framing new anti-terror laws has at times threatened to swamp Obama’s team, particularly on the issue of rehousing inmates of the soon-to-be closed camp at Guantanamo Bay.
After reading classified accounts of US questioning of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, Holder picked Assistant US Attorney John Durham, a career prosecutor, to determine whether a full investigation was needed.
Durham will investigate whether CIA officers and contractors broke US law when trying to scare terror suspects detained overseas.
The Department of Justice on Monday revealed details of a report by a CIA inspector general showing that interrogators at secret CIA prisons threatened to kill the children of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Other detainees were threatened with the rape of family members, execution, shooting and torture.
“I have concluded that the information known to me warrants opening a preliminary review into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations,” Holder said.
If Durham’s investigation concludes that US laws were broken, it is not clear whether Holder would chose to go ahead with prosecutions.
Obama had previously made clear that CIA interrogators, acting on the basis of legal guidelines drawn up by former president Bush’s administration would not face the wrath of the law.
“The president has said repeatedly that he wants to look forward, not back,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs in a statement.
“The president agrees with the attorney general that those who acted in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance should not be prosecuted.
“Ultimately, determinations about whether someone broke the law are made independently by the attorney general,” he said.
Obama’s opponents reacted angrily to the move, seeking to further damage an administration already rocked by opposition to its health care reform plan.
Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate called Holder’s decision “poor and misguided.”
“We must remain mindful that we still are very much a nation at war with terrorists who spend every hour of their day planning how to hurt America and Americans,” he said.
Other Republican senators, among them party heavyweights Jon Kyl, Kit Bond and Jeff Sessions, wrote to Holder to complain.
The decision “could, among other things, have a chilling effect on the work of the intelligence community” because of fears among agents of possible future prosecution, they wrote.
But for some Democratic supporters of Obama, Holder did not go far enough.
“The abuses that were officially sanctioned amounted to torture and those at the very top who authorized, ordered or sought to provide legal cover for them should be held accountable,” said Democratic Senator Russ Feingold. “We cannot simply sweep these abuses under the rug.”
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